HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- A couple fans from Toronto drove about seven hours to Battle
Creek, Mich., to see '90s hard-rock band Brother Cane's opening show of a
four-date mini-tour.

"That's the furthest, but we've had a lot of people that
have driven a few hours to see the shows," guitarist Dave Anderson says. The Huntsville musician joined the Birmingham group for their strong 1995 sophomore
LP "Seeds."

"It feels good that somebody else still cares about this as
much as we do."

During
the group's heyday, at least eight Brother Cane singles cracked the top 30 of Billboard's
Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, including two number ones, 1998's "I Lie in the
Bed I Make" and 1995's "And Fools Shine One," as well as their signature 1993
hit "Got No Shame," which featured scorching harmonica work from now-deceased Magic City bluesman
Topper Price.

"We were out we were essentially a classic-rock informed rock
'n' roll band," Anderson says. "And in trying to stay current without selling
ourselves, we were influenced by what was going around, so I think the things
that it morphed into ended up being our own sound."

On a recent afternoon, Anderson is in his hotel room at New
Buffalo, Mich.'s, Four Winds Casino on an off-day before Brother Cane plays the
music venue there.

"There was a Kiss slot machine that I had to hit," Anderson
says when asked about his casino game of choice. "I didn't do it much because
I'm afraid of losing money, but couldn't resist a Kiss slot machine and I'm a
little up right now so I think I'll keep it like that."

Brother Cane's touring lineup also features founding
singer/guitarist Damon Johnson (also a current member of Thin Lizzy, as well as
that band's offshoot Black Star Riders) and original drummer Scott Collier - with
Flip Cooper, of Huntsville rockers Rearview Ghost, on bass.

The mini-tour concludes with an Aug. 3 homecoming show at
Birmingham's WorkPlay Theatre. Showtime is 8 p.m. and tickets are $20 advance
and $25 day of show.

Dave, how is playing with Brother Cane now different than
back in the day?

I think that's an easy answer that's already been on my
mind. I think we play with a certain amount of ... There are two factors here:
One is, speaking for me and I can't speak for Scott but we've had this
conversation, but the two of us appreciate it more now I think than we did
then. Part of that is because the pressures or promoting a record and trying to
survive in a rock environment where we're so different, I think sometimes we
felt the pressure of being different, and it might have put somewhat of a
negative cloud over how we felt about what we were doing. But we still felt we
were different in a good way.

But I think also, that same lack of pressure from promoting
a record ... We're just playing it because love to play it and we want to. And
thank God there's still people coming out that still know the words. I think we
feel more personal with it, that it's ours and not something we're trying to
move to make money for someone else. It's ours. And it feels a lot more
satisfying. The crowds might not be quite as big, but it's a little more sacred
and dear for us.

Getting ready to talk with you, I found a setlist from the
mini-tour, and went back and listened to some of those Brother Cane songs again.
"20/20 Faith," Horses & Needles," "Machete." I forgot how good these sound.
What songs have you been particularly enjoying playing again?

"20/20," like you mentioned is a great one. We added two
songs from the first record that I played very few times, and I wasn't on that
record, "Woman" and "How Long." Those have been particularly fun. All of it.
Some of the stuff off "Wishpool," like the title track and "Machete" are total
rockers but have a lot going on with them too.

It's fun to be able to play that kind of involved
arrangement and hit it tight, there's a certain kind of satisfaction in doing
that. It's a nice rush.

I know as a guitarist, Eddie Van Halen means a lot to you –
like he does to a lot of people – especially as you were growing up. Got any
cool stories from when Brother Cane toured with Van Halen in the mid-90s as
their opening act?

Oh yeah. The coolest was the first show we did with them, in
Dayton (Ohio), I watched their soundcheck and Eddie walked past after it was
done and kind of smiled and nodded and then he came back and said, "Are you in
Brother Cane?" And I said, "Yeah," and he threw his arms around me and said,
"Welcome aboard." That and - we did a couple months worth of shows – playing
our set and looking over and him standing there watching and nodding and
smiling. That was surreal.

The coolest one was the last show we did, Irvine Meadows (Amphitheatre
in California), he came into the dressing room, and I kept wanting to tell him
... You know, I played "Eruption" when I was in 10th grade at a pep
rally. I had glasses and pencil-thin neck and braces, and I stepped to the
middle of the gym and played the finger-tapping part and the crowd went nuts
and that sealed the deal: I was going to do this for a living.

And I kept wanting to tell him the story. But I thought,
"How many times has he heard this kind of thing?" So he came into the dressing
room and the band kept saying, "Tell him, Dave. Tell him." And he said, "Tell
me what?" and I told him the story and again he threw his arms around me and
said, "Man, that's the greatest story ever." To be able to tell him that story
was just very surreal.

Listening to the old Brother Cane tunes, I was thinking, "This
sounds as good or better than anything new I'm hearing on rock radio these
days, yet it sounds like it could've just come out yesterday." Why do you think
the material holds up well?

The funny thing is, I hear some of the newer bands that you
hear on 95.1, some of them I know for a fact were Brother Cane fans -- like Three
Doors Down. Ironically, I feel really close to the Brother Cane stuff, yet some
of the stuff it influenced, I don't think they got the core of it -- and I can
say a lot of this not feeling as arrogant because it's mainly Damon's baby.
Damon wrote the stuff. I think the sound of the band putting it through our
machine definitely seals what it was, but I think I can have somewhat of a side
view of it since it's not my creative baby, but at the same time I feel a huge
part of what it is.

Which of the other '90s band that were active and new at
that time were you guys into?

We were really into Soundgarden. And you can hear that a lot
more on "Wishpool," I think. At the same time, we were listening to a lot of
Police and there's a song on "Seeds" that when we realized how much the drum
beat was like "Synchronicity II" the working title was
"Synchronicity," and we actually ended up live morphing part of "Synchronicity
II" into it. The songs were not at the same. It was just the beat.

It's just a deep-rooted history of rock that comes through
in what he does. I have always been into so many kinds of music, but he is just
such a rock historian, and of course
Thin Lizzy is a huge part of what he does, and now he plays with them, which is
surreal for him.

Speaking of Thin Lizzy, on the recent Brother Cane setlist I
found online it looks like you guys are covering "Jailbreak."

Yes, we do that now – it's kind of his tip of the hat to (Johnson's)
other gig – but we've always done that song once in a while. We have a
recording that we did, just in one take, for the "Seeds" album floating around
that's just deadly. And it was supposed to be the flip-side of a single at one time,
but that never materialized.

Which tracks on the two Brother Cane albums you played on, "Seeds"
and "Wishpool," are you most proud of your contributions on?

I'd say all of "Wishpool" in that Edge-kind of textural
guitar stuff. Especially in the song "Lead My Follow," which it was probably
four o'clock at least in the morning – we'd been working all night – and we
knew the track was going to be special, but it was a groove-oriented track that
hadn't gotten any color. It was still black and white.

I just said, "Man, let me have a go at it. Give me a few
tracks." And I did a real 3D delay part, and in 10 minutes it was done – we did
two or three tracks. And we came back the next day and everybody was like,
"Wow." I'd say that's probably it.

What's the vibe like between you and Damon as a guitar duo?

It's really good. When I joined the band, it was definitely
a format where he was playing the leads and singing lead and when I came in I
was more of a "parts" kind of guy. I'd always fancied myself a lead player, but
it was kind of a welcome thing to me because I'd always loved people live The
Edge. And (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers') Mike Campbell. So my role has
always been more coming up with the signature parts as opposed to the solos.

There were so many talented rock groups during Brother Cane's
era. Did that make things super competitive?

It was very competitive. One of the things that came out of
that era was, there were so many bands with records out, it was the birth of
the radio show, which are these shows –which on the plus side, we got to do
shows with every band out there, I mean you name it, Foo Fighters, Green Day. All
the other bands that were out.

But the down side is all the bands did those shows for free
because we wanted the political points to get played on the radio stations. So
the radio stations made all kinds of money off these events off the backs of
bands, so it hurt the bottom line for musicians. We were also struggling with
distribution companies that weren't putting our product in the stores when we
were number one at rock radio.

And I think a lot of those factors ... It was a very
competitive environment for bands. That was the first time the pie was starting
to shrink. You're in the wake of the big '80s. And it was a competitive time.
But I would say that most of the bands that we met on the road, it didn't manifest
in bad attitudes amongst each other. From my memory, everyone was pretty
friendly. We definitely had a lot of people from those bands standing on the
side of the stage during our shows, for sure.